


The Man From Bitter Ridge

by nonky



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 04:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17891714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonky/pseuds/nonky
Summary: The Man from Bitter Ridge is a real western, but I only used it for the rather apt title. This is for westwingwolf who encouraged my Community viewing and my Jeff/Annie musings.





	The Man From Bitter Ridge

Last year – apologies to Britta's cowgirl and nursing cred – was miserable. Jeff Winger didn't like being dirty, cold or hunted. He could barely handle knowing a woman was expecting him to pay for dinner; saving damsels was not what he was there to do.

Greendale actually might be the most distracting school there ever was, because he was rarely on top of class work and typically trying to save somebody from hurt feelings or their own dark insecurities. He recalled something about career and success, but at least he wasn't screwing his teacher this year.

Maybe he was evolving, because damn it was taking a long time to see the change.

He was honestly going to forgo paintball this year, until the evil ice cream cone announced the prize. That was an insane amount of money to gain for really killing someone. Fake killing everyone – even his friends, yes, Shirley and Jesus – was not straining his conscience.

Two things were straining his conscience. Annie wouldn't let up about being nicer to Pierce. Jeff was of the opinion that the old, rich, racist, serial-marrier might not be worth a whole lot of pity. He was revolting to everyone, Annie included. He leered, he whined, he did absolutely no work, and his sanity was questionable. It was hard enough to find some group activity that allowed everyone who was nice and agreeable to join in. Pierce made everything impossible and brutally awkward.

He was a bully. Jeff knew, because if he'd ever bothered to speak to anyone less cool than himself in high school it was to say something cutting. He understood his social status and used it to vent at innocent dorks for a long time. Only when he was a shark amongst sharks had he realized it wasn't pleasant to be made fun of at random moments of the day for doing something as human as tying a shoelace.

Yeah, lawyers were dicks. He'd heard the jokes. He'd even seen the sexual harassment educational films – at a stag night for all the dick lawyers he'd worked with. And they were watching girls Annie's age strip at the time, while negotiating a lower rate for body shots.

College was a do-over, and he was trying to be better than if he'd actually gone to college when he was Annie's age. She just didn't seem to understand some people were utter knobs. Pierce was ancient. He was old enough to be something they'd study in anthropology. He had never tried to change. Every once in a while he felt he'd gone too far, even for him, and tried to buy his way back into their hearts.

Everyone in study group was Jeff's friend. Everyone mattered, regardless of how puzzling and infuriating they could be. That was why Pierce had to quit tearing the rest of them down for no other reason than long-standing habit. Hell, if Dean Pelton was a little less concerned with flirting and cross-dressing, he'd kick Pierce out as part of their zero tolerance on inhumanity.

Jeff knew inhuman guys with money and too much confidence. His father had been the same type of guy, and that had never ended well. He had made a deal with himself that he would never get married and have kids just to be that guy. He couldn't stomach it. He couldn't stomach Pierce.

The second big problem for his conscience was that Annie had shucked her long skirt at some point and was going around shooting people in tights and a corset. That was also kind of an issue. Not a daddy issue, thank god, but an issue.

Last year, he'd have been wild for victory. He'd have fought to the death for the bloody-minded thrill of telling everyone else to suck it. This year he just really wanted his onyx light wool linen-feel trousers because he was having some concerns about the pressure on his crotch. He might still want kids in the future and blood supply was feeling dodgy.

So help him god, he wanted Annie to win the money and go be amazing somewhere people were worthy of her faith in them. He'd sworn never to be that guy handing off a wad of cash instead of facing up to a personal tie he'd created. It really wasn't fair for the universe to test his new resolve by giving terrifyingly cute Annie a gun and making him watch her run around bouncing all day.

Without pants. Jeff decided to shoot himself and say he'd been jumped. Maybe. Or he could hang out and take down Pierce. Maybe Annie would let him wear her skirt.

He fumbled a bullet and she picked it up for him like the polite schoolgirl she was, bending way over and somehow revolving on the way. His glorious view of cleavage disappeared down near her knees about the time that banging Annie ass turned fully in his direction, then the whole thing reversed with slow-motion jiggling.

“Are you okay, Jeff,” she asked.

His jaw clenched and he yanked his hat off while running his forearm over the sweat caught under the band. “I'm gonna go shoot some jerks,” he muttered.

Tossing a look so virulent even Abed got his lack of invitation, Jeff left the cafeteria. He put one hand on his holster, but he wasn't really all that invested in staying in the game. He just needed some air, and going to the courtyard would be like volunteering as a shooting gallery duck.

“Where are you going,” Annie asked behind him, trotting to catch up on her impressively long shorter legs.

He wanted her to leave, but they were too far from the cafeteria to send her back alone. She was a big girl, but the halls were full of bandits who'd shoot a man in the back as soon as they'd cut to get the last serving of chicken fingers. Maybe Annie was finally ready to see the truth about Pierce.

“There's a fable about a scorpion and a fox – or a dog,” he shrugged, speaking softly. “Four legs, furry, dog-like, anyway, doesn't matter. The point is, they meet at a river and the fox-dog thing can swim but the scorpion can't. The scorpion promises not to sting if the dog will carry him across, and they'll part ways peaceably.”

“Okay,” Annie drawled. Her cowboy manners were either getting better or worse, depending on taste. She was scanning the doors lining the hallway, and he didn't even have his gun drawn. She could handle it, and if not he'd shoot whoever popped up.

“So the moral of the story is the scorpion climbed on his back and the fox doggy-paddled along, but when they were in the middle of the river the scorpion stung him. With his last breath, he asked why. The scorpion said, ' Because it's my nature,' and they both drowned.”

Her dainty nose wrinkled in an expression he needed to have a cute name for. It was equal parts disgust, bewilderment and humouring him.

“That's great, are you planning on stinging me?”

“NO! I'm – Pierce is just not a nice guy. You look at him like a wacky old neighbour or a grumpy grandpa, but he's pretty much my dad's age. He's mean, Annie, and that way he has of not caring about anyone is his real way of dealing with people. When he's nice, it's fine, but he's almost never nice and he'll always get mean again,” Jeff told her. “I'm not good with feelings. I'm not good with feeling things, or watching other people feel things, or fixing hurt feelings. Pierce is a jerk because he chooses to be a jerk. He's alone because he's impossible to be around. I know he says you're his favourite – you're everybody's favourite -”

Her incredibly neat hair shook in a soft, shiny curtain. “Not Britta's.”

“Britta is weird anyway,” he contended. “One day Pierce will say something so awful none of us will even be able to live with being in that study room as a group, and everything will be ruined. You said the study group is your family, and it's my family, too. I don't want it to get screwed up. I had a family with a guy just like Pierce, and he screwed it up for good.”

They were approaching a corner, and she pulled him flush to the wall. They inched along until Jeff had a view northwest, and Annie could check southwest. Her nod cleared him to duck his head around the northeast corridor. It was clear, aside from one shuddering lump of Chang in their path.

“Ugh, Chang?! Are you hit?”

There was a whimper, and Jeff wondered how the guy did anything. He hadn't even managed to get his hands unbound or the blindfold off. He moved so Annie could peek, and felt her little sympathetic shiver.

“Ben? Can you talk,” she called. “We're going to come get you, okay? Jeff, I'll go first, kick him on his side, make sure he's not holding a weapon . . . somewhere, then you can pick him up and we'll take him back to Fort Hawthorne.”

She didn't wait for him to agree, which was probably better than having a lengthy argument about Chang's being deserving of rescue. He covered her as Annie darted over and gave a soft kick to Chang's belly. They guy flopped to his back and groaned loudly.

“Shh! You'll give away our position,” Annie told him. “Jeff, come on!”

Her gun came up, and he was man enough to admit she was a better shot. He had read something about girls having better delicate motor skills from makeup application. Reluctantly, he picked through the piles of dumped garbage, shoved Chang's hands so they wouldn't touch him, grabbed him under the knees and lifted him bride style.

“Jeff,” Chang said brazenly. “I'd know that chest anywhere.”

“Don't talk or we'll go Donner party on you,” he mumbled, following Annie back to the cafeteria. Jeff knew three things were going to happen once they got there; Chang's bound hands would brush him on his leg or worse while he was putting him down, Abed would complain about genre mash-up for including a re-enactment of The Bodyguard, and Chang would decide to join Vicki in dancing for twinkies.

Annie put a hand out and stopped him, concealing all three of them in a doorway until a lone chess club member stomped past. They continued on carefully. As they neared the cafeteria they were bound to run into more people, either refugees looking for food and a safe bathroom, or those looking for allies.

“You used to be a jerk,” Annie told him plainly. “When the study group got together you were our biggest jerk. And now you're carrying an injured man to sanctuary.”

“I'm carrying Chang. He's not injured or a man.”

She looked over her shoulder and winked, awesomely. She was really kind of spectacular in a firefight, he thought helplessly, then grunted in distaste as Chang tried to cuddle. “Maybe Pierce just needs a little more time to be a better man.”

They had voted and technically Pierce hadn't been voted out. If he made any effort at all, it would probably be better than the man he'd been. Anyway, Annie was at the door, flattening herself as much as her breasts would allow to let him slink by to safety.

“I'll stand by the vote,” Jeff told her. “He gets a year, but you're the one that got him that year. It's not for Pierce, it's so you don't have to feel guilty when we really do kick him out.”

She nodded solemnly, her hiding-disappointment-for-hope face. Jeff sighed and angled Chang's legs so they fit through the doorway.

“Hey, where did your skirt go, anyway,” he asked.

Adorably, she smirked and gave him a careless shrug. “Oklahoma,” she teased.

Chang started to sing, so Jeff hurried into the cafeteria, the tortured beginning echoing obnoxiously.

“Oooooo-klahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plain-”


End file.
